February 10, 2026
Jaime Valdez/Imagn Images
MarJon Beauchamp played his first minutes as a member of the Sixers on Monday night in Portland.
On the getaway day of a season-high five-game road trip across the country with one game left until the All-Star break, it is easy to stress the importance of avoiding a letdown performance. As it turns out, it is much more challenging to actually prevent one from occurring.
In reality, the Sixers might have lost Monday's finale to their Western Conference swing during the final hour before it tipped off. Quentin Grimes went from questionable to out, then Joel Embiid went from questionable to out and Dominick Barlow went from available to questionable to out. It was a brutal string of updates which sealed the Sixers' fate against a young and hungry Portland Trail Blazers loss.
A 135-118 loss ensued, as the Sixers' valiant effort in the first half was promptly wiped out in a third-quarter brutalization. The Trail Blazers, who entered Monday last in the NBA in team three-point percentage, experienced a collective heater. Toumani Camara, known for his perimeter defensive chops, had the best shooting night of his life. With a makeshift rotation, the Sixers did not have nearly enough manpower to withstand Portland's pushes.
The Sixers will take a 3-2 road trip; their previous loss to the Los Angeles Lakers will sting much more than this one. Takeaways from Monday's action:
To say this game was over before it started would be unfair to the Sixers, who did lead for much of the first half and into intermission thanks to a strong offensive push from Tyrese Maxey, Kelly Oubre Jr. and Trendon Watford. Oubre was particularly excellent early, scoring 16 efficient points and swiping four steals in the first half. The Sixers were clearly the better team through 24 minutes, but Portland's uncharacteristically great three-point shooting kept them right in the thick of it.
And then came the third quarter.
The Sixers' disastrous third quarters have become infamous this season, and boy was this one a catastrophic 12-minute period. Portland's three-point barrage was unstoppable; the Trail Blazers played every bit as well as the Sixers played poorly. The result was a 49-22 frame at the Sixers' expense.
8-9 FROM DEEP. 10-11 FROM THE FLOOR.
— NBA (@NBA) February 10, 2026
Toumani Camara (26 PTS) has a new career-high in 3PM 🚨 pic.twitter.com/YRioIr3qw2
Much has been made of these woes in third quarters all year. It is not merely a public talking point; the Sixers have been focused on it for months. After a game the Sixers won in November despite another horrid third quarter, the phrase "30th in 3rd Q" was written on a whiteboard. Someone took a red marker and wrote one word over the top of that figure: "STILL."
All season, Sixers head coach Nick Nurse and his players have fielded pestering questions about why the team has experienced so many of these collapses coming out of halftime. They have not had concrete answers. Their confusion is understandable in that the rules of basketball do not change in third quarters. Nurse has not made sweeping strategic changes coming out of halftime breaks. At the end of the day, it is not an issue pertaining to third quarters, it is an issue pertaining to consistency and focus.
With his team's depth completely gutted, Nurse had very few levels he could pull on Monday. The first example of that: Justin Edwards, by default the team's ninth man since Jared McCain was traded but a player who had been out of Nurse's rotation entirely for a very long stretch, was the sixth man.
Edwards is going to get minutes for the foreseeable future, but his role was even more significant on Monday as the only perimeter-oriented player available off the bench with a decent sample of NBA minutes this season. Edwards had a few moments he would like to have back as a one-on-one defender, but his minutes were more solid than they have usually been this season; he nabbed a pair of early steals, knocked down two quick triples and helped out on the boards.
Moments after Edwards checked into the game for the first time, the 39-year-old Kyle Lowry followed suit. Lowry had not played rotation minutes since Dec. 23; his role on this team is almost exclusively centered around his leadership in the locker room. But without many available bodies, Nurse turned to a mind he has the utmost faith in. Lowry predictably had little to no quantifiable impact on the game.
Lowry went from designated mentor to eighth man on Monday, and that meant Nurse still needed to find another rotation piece behind him. The obvious option, even though it was only his third time dressing for the Sixers and his first time actually getting on the court for the team, was two-way swingman MarJon Beauchamp. Beauchamp did not do anything spectacular, but he did contribute to the team's strong ball movement in their last good stretch of the night in the second quarter, notching three assists in his first seven minutes and change, including a particularly impressive one after cutting off of Trendon Watford:
Sharpshooter Drum off the nice feed from MarJon Beauchamp in his first game as a Sixer. pic.twitter.com/FsWDrGwDrv
— Liberty Ballers (@Liberty_Ballers) February 10, 2026
Every season, every team has at least a few games like this, where a bunch of things break wrong at once and the list of available players is trimmed significantly. For the Sixers, it was three late scratches coming at the same time as two roster spots being temporarily filled by 10-day contract signees. Last season, though, the Sixers played for weeks or months at a time under these conditions. One night is manageable.
Two additional notes, explaining why the Sixers were undermanned:
• Not only was Embiid being ruled out due to right knee injury management shortly before tip-off a surprise, but it marked the first time since Dec. 28 that Embiid missed a game that was not part of a back-to-back.
• Apparently, the Sixers have a bug of some sort for the second time in about six weeks. Grimes was posted on the injury report on Monday afternoon with an illness, and minutes after he was officially ruled out the Sixers added Barlow to the injury report with an illness as well, ruling him out shortly thereafter. The Sixers had an injury bug in mid-late December which impacted most key players on the roster across a period of two weeks.
Up next: Before the All-Star break begins, the Sixers will return home and play host to the New York Knicks on Wednesday night.
